Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Bad Poetry: Ode to Guys and Tinkering

Just in time to get some sponsored posts up, comes the notification that this poem did not win a contest.

A Stone Age guy whose name was Murgh
was always tinkering’round
with rocks and twigs and beetles
and anything he found.

He tried eating twigs for dinner.
It only made him sick.
He suggested trying beetles.
His wife hit him with a stick.

Oh, he was a foolish fellow,
they said in those days of yore,
always neglecting business
to try things not done before!

He stuck a twig into his nose,
producing sinus pains.
Friends said, “If the discharge were less
we’d think it was your brains.”

His experiments were stupid,
all the Stone Age folks agreed.
He was always trying silly things
for which there was no need.

He tried eating poison ivy,
raised a rash on his back end.
His best pal said, “Don’t tell anyone
that I was once your friend.”

It was really almost blasphemous,
devout Stone Agers said,
the way he ignored their wisdom
with such notions in his head.

He tried using fire to dispel
the damp inside the cave.
A spark lit on his sleeping furs!
The whole tribe had a close shave!

The tribal elders said it was
a sorrow and a shame
that this foolish youth’s experiments
endangered their good name

He tried to use a rock to smash
a pimple on his face.
His wife said, “If a man were single
I would let him take your place.”

Had the Jackass Show existed then
he might have won a prize,
but the Stone Age did not yet reward
experiments unwise.

Five hundred or a thousand times
he tried to burn a stone.
At least four hundred of those times
he caused someone to groan:

“Murgh you fool, you’ve put the fire out!
Won’t you please just go away
and perish in the wilderness
doing things in some new way?”

And when he built a fire so hot
it burned around a stone,
no one could stay inside the cave
until the fire was gone.

And they all formed a Society
for Murgh-Damage Control,
discussing ways they might subdue
this restless, reckless soul.

And Murgh built a great big hot fire
out in the open air,
enough to melt a soft, red rock!
It gave them quite a scare!

And if this tribe had not lived in
a dampish coastal clime,
they might have been wiped out by that
wildfire for all time.

But as things were, a storm blew up
and put Murgh’s fire out,
and left some new, hard, shiny stuff
for Murgh to show about...

And that was how the Stone Age gave
way to the Iron Age,
and subsequent generations
then revered Murgh as a sage.


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